The evolution of tea

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England's love affair with tea has taken some surprising
twists, writes Carolyn Webb.

Specialist tea shops stock every type of tea imaginable. Bar
one, perhaps. Snail tea. According to the curator of an exhibition
on the social history of tea, it was a remedy for the common cold
in the 17th and 18th centuries.

English diarist John Byng swore by it. Holidaying in the
Notting-hamshire village of Barnby Moor in 1792, he wrote: "I
look'd frequently out of my windows at early morn; and finding the
rain to continue, did not rise till 8 o'clock. I drank snail tea
for breakfast, for my chest is very sore, as every cold, or damp
flies to that quarter."

It's one of the details that curator Nina Stanton has drawn on
for her exhibition, Taking Tea with English Bodies.

Silver, glass, ceramic and wood tea accoutrements spanning more
than 400 years are displayed in six different tea settings in the
rooms of the 145-year-old East Melbourne home of the late antique
collector Bill Johnston.

Stanton says tea was popularised in England in the 1660s after
King Charles II's betrothed, the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza,
brought a casket of tea with her dowry.

In early 18th-century England, the middle classes imported
delicate porcelain bowls (rather than the later cups) and teapots
from China and Japan.

Etiquette included sucking tea through a cube of sugar, tapping
your bowl four times to signify to the servants that you were
finished, and keeping a small kettle table beside the tea table.
Spoons were at first too big for saucers, so were placed on a
silver "boat".

By the 1740s, England had started making its own porcelain and
its tea cups were often blatant copies of Chinese designs. Cups got
larger as tea prices decreased.

The Duchess of Bedford is credited with inventing afternoon tea
about 1840, to fill in the time between lunch and dinner. It became
de rigueur to have muffins, toast and cake with your tea.

Cheaper silver plates often replaced silver tea sets, and bone
china (which included animal bone and was durable) became
popular.